1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to an optical disc drive, and in particular, to a buffer management method for playing a fast rolling music disc.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, an optical disc drive can be enabled to decode and play compressed music files from an optical disc. A fast rolling function including fast forwarding and fast rewinding allows users to rapidly search desired parts in the optical disc. The CPU employed in the optical disc drive is typically a low-end one so that costs and power consumptions can be lower. Conventionally, when fast rolling is initiated, the optical disc is rotated at an accelerated rate, and music that may be playing is interrupted. In efforts to avoid interruption of music play, some known technologies have been proposed to raise the decoding rate, such that a music file is played at a higher rate synchronous to the optical disc rotation. However, this approach is not feasible because the CPU and decoder may not be sufficient enough to handle high speed data processing. In addition, increasing the decoding rate induces higher power consumption, and music played at a higher rate usually sounds like insignificant noise, rendering unacceptable sound quality. Thus, the optical disc drive capable of uninterrupted music play in a fast rolling mode, with satisfactory music quality, and an enhanced method thereof is desirable.